Saturday, May 31, 2014

See that longish, sticky-looking package thing, in the center of the photo? Look closely: there's a caterpillar sticking out of the left-side end of it:

As I said at the link:

I've just looked it up, and I quickly found a remarkably similar photo—even down to the way those outer sticks are configured: it's the cocoon (empty, pretty sure [not this time!]) of the caterpillar of a case moth, the Saunders' Case Moth, Metura elongatus. Oh, you have to go here, too. And holy crap, here, too. (I've just realized, this is related to the "Walking Turd" from December, but a different species, clearly.)

We've watched this guy (gal?) build that case, ever so slowly, while living on and among one plant—a grevillia—on our veranda. Every night—and sometimes, but only rarely, during daylight hours, as happened here for these photos Christine took—he comes out and walks around, dragging his case with him (he never leaves it), munching away on the leaves of the poor grevillia.

Here's a short close-up video of him/her eating, and the stick-cocoon that we've watched him build for several months now:

Here's a drawing showing the different life stages of our friend, and a similar creature. Description, from the already-linked Museum Victoria:

A zoological illustration of the Saunders' Case Moth, Metura elongatus, and the Faggot Case Moth, Clania ignobilis, by Arthur Bartholemew.

One day our friend here will close up shop, hunker down, and become a moth, like the one on the right in the image above, pretty sure. This is just sad—he's been a very good companion these several months. But not for him, or her, I suppose. If it's a she, she will stay in her cocoon; if it's a he, he will emerge—and fly off to find a female waiting in her cocoon for a male to come along.

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Longtime American political commentator Michael Kinsley was asked to write a review for the New York Times Book Review of "No Place to Hide," former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald's book on NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, and the NSA itself.

The review has been widelypanned, primarilybecause it made the shocking argument that when it comes to matters of who should decide whether or not a news organization should publish classified government secrets - the government should get the final call.

The question is who decides. It seems clear, at least to me, that the private companies that own newspapers, and their employees, should not have the final say over the release of government secrets, and a free pass to make them public with no legal consequences. In a democracy (which, pace Greenwald, we still are), that decision must ultimately be made by the government.

Why that is shocking and wrong isn't rocket science: Kinsley is arguing that President Richard Nixon ("the government" in Kinsley's equation) should have had the final say on whether or not the Washington Post (one of those privately owned "newspapers") should have been able to expose the Watergate scandal. (And the Nixon administration tried to have that final say, too: look at John Mitchell's "big fat wringer" remark here.) It is a shocking, absurd argument, made all the more shocking and absurd because it's being made by a journalist, and in the New York Times, a paper that has numerous times over the course of its very long existence published classified documents - against the will of the government - thereby exposing truckloads of government wrongdoing.

The paper's public editor, Margaret Sullivan, after having gotten an earful from readers, critiqued Kinsley's review, pointing out especially the wrong spoken to above, and Kinsley has now responded to that, in an even more absurd fashion. Sullivan said this:

After the review was published online last week, many commenters and readers (and Mr. Greenwald himself) attacked the review, which was not only negative about the book but [Kinsley] also expressed a belief that many journalists find appalling: that news organizations should simply defer to the government when it comes to deciding what the public has a right to know about its secret activities.

In her scolding of me and The New York Times Book Review for a review critical of Glenn Greenwald’s “No Place to Hide,” Margaret Sullivan writes that I believe “that news organizations should simply defer to the government” on the issue of making secret documents public. I guess I wasn’t clear (though I don’t know how I could have been clearer). The government sometimes has legitimate reasons for needing secrecy but “will usually be overprotective” so the process of decision “should openly tilt in favor of publication with minimal delay.” Does that sound like I’m saying that news organizations “should simply defer”?

Pay attention to what Kinsley has done here. He has basically said:

• I didn't say news organizations should defer to government—I said government should tilt toward publication.

Kinsley still has the government making the decision. He still thinks "that decision must ultimately be made by the government." Kinsley's mocking (sneering!) tone might make you think so, but he hasn't in any way refuted Sullivan's charge, since it of course follows that news organizations would have to defer to government if the government made the decision Kinsley granted them against publication of whatever secrets were being argued about.

Government does not—ever—"tilt toward the publication" of government secrets that make government look bad. Kinsley is making a patently absurd argument, one that turns the 1st Amendment on its head, and it deserved the strong rebuke Sullivan, in her position as public editor, gave it.

Kinsley adds a straw man to the mix, as well:

Do the people on the other side of this argument believe that the government never has a legitimate need for secrecy? (Standard example: the time and location of the D-Day invasion.)

I honestly cannot tell if Kinsley is just mixed up or being insultingly dishonest here. Arguing for the right of American news organizations to do what they have done since the U.S. was founded—publish government secrets that expose government wrongdoing without interference from the government—is not arguing "that the government never has a legitimate need for secrecy." That's either a deliberate disingenuous and innuendo-laden straw man, or Kinsley is simply unable to be coherent on this subject. I almost hope for the former, as one can at least fight that. The latter is just sad.

P.S. Kinsley's "the private companies that own newspapers" remarks is just weird. I suppose he'd be okay with government-owned newspapers making publishing decisions?

Update: Let's note for the record that Kinsley's argument is about government secrets already in the possession of a news organization or organizations—otherwise there would be no argument over who gets publication decision. (A newspaper can't argue to publish secrets it doesn't have.) Slipped into Kinsley's argument is the implication that we're talking about all government secrets, including ones no news organization has or had, or threatens or threatened to publish—such as "the time and location of the D-Day invasion," or similar. This is, again, an insulting and innuendo-laden straw man.

Friday, May 2, 2014

David Omand is a former director of the UK's GCHQ—British equivalent to the U.S.'s NSA—and the other day he wrote an opinion piece that was published in Prospect Magazine, about the debate that arose via the leaks by Edward Snowden of massive amounts of data from the NSA.

Basically: Omand argues that people are exaggerating, wrongly implying that we're in some sort of Orweillian total-surveillance state, when nothing of the sort is actually true, and that this exaggeration hurts the reasonable debate we should be having, the "reasonable debate" we should be having amounting to, if I'm reading it right—"Shut up with the questions about surveillance already!" (Please read the piece if you're interested in the subject.)

Little ol' me left a comment there, but it has not, for some reason, been published. (Update, May 3: it has now been published.) So I am posting it here, with a few rewrites and additions. For what it's worth.

* * *

David Omand ignores some fundamental truths. (This is coming from an American perspective, and is mostly about the NSA, but, as Omand speaks to both the GCHQ and the NSA, I think this applies.)

1. BROKEN OVERSIGHT: Omand acknowledges the need for vigorous oversight – “not least from the intrusion into privacy that it can involve” – but doesn’t speak at all to the fact that Edward Snowden’s leaks, as well as subsequent releases since, have shown that oversight is broken in significant ways, as the NSA simply lied to its main overseer, the FISA court, on numerous occasions, and/or lied to, simply didn’t tell, or hamstrung intelligence committees about what it was doing.

2. HISTORY OF DOMESTIC SURVEILLANCE: Omand says there is no “monitoring scandal to uncover,” and acts as if even bringing the subject up is preposterous. This ignores that this exact agency, the NSAhas a very ugly history of spying on its own citizens (pdf), a history uncovered in the 1970s that constitutes a “monitoring scandal” of epic proportions. And let’s not pretend the 1960s and 1970s were the Dark Ages. It wasn’t that long ago. And let’s also not pretend that the fixes that came from that ugly and illegal activity being uncovered prevent any chance of it happening again. This is eactly what today’s broken oversight is about.

3. SURVEILLANCE ABILITIES: The ability to carry out domestic surveillance has grown enormously since just the 1970s – and they were able to do a hell of a job of it then. (Bringing up the mind-reading thing – too silly for a response. Tell it to the Church Committee.)

Put just these three things together – the present broken or just very damaged state of oversight, the history of very ugly domestic spying activity, and the ability to carry out even more widespread and deeper surveillance today – and Omand’s mocking/scolding of people for bringing up the subject of mass surveillance, or a monitoring scandal, comes off a little like someone saying, “Oh come on – Nixon wouldn’t do that! Stop with the conspiracy theories!” – in mid-1973 or so. (Given that it’s David Omand, former directore of the GCHQ – it comes off as a bit more than that.)

P.S. We haven't heard the last of NSA/GCHQ scandals, so it may still be early for Omand to make this call in the first place. (And please do read the pdf - it's fascinating stuff.)